Javier Sanchez-Santos, who claims to be the son of award-winning Spaniard Julio Iglesias, arrives to appear before a court in Valencia for a paternity case at City of Justice in Valencia. Picture: JOSE MIGUEL FERNANDEZ DE VELASCO/Reuters

Crooner Julio Iglesias ruled to be man's father because they 'obviously' look alike

By ALISHA ROUSE SHOWBUSINESS CORRESPONDENT Jul 11, 2019

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Julio Iglesias was on Wednesday ruled to be the father of a 43-year-old man born after a one-week affair between the singer and a ballerina.

A judge in Spain declared Javier Sanchez Santos to be the star’s son because of their ‘obvious physical resemblance’.

Mr Santos has spent much of his life seeking to prove he was the product of a 1975 fling between his mother, Portuguese former dancer Maria Edite, and Iglesias.

Although the judge refused to admit DNA evidence which triggered the latest case – dismissing it because it had been surreptitiously obtained – he commented on Mr Santos’s looks and added that the court ‘declares that Julio Iglesias is his biological father’.

He also cited as evidence the singer’s refusal to carry out a DNA test. The judge said the mother had provided credible details of the affair, including location and description of the Spanish singer’s chalet.

Iglesias, who is now 75, once claimed he had an ‘obsession with sex’ and has eight other children. He was first cited in the paternity suit in 1992. Although Mr Santos and Miss Edite won that case, the ruling was quashed on appeal.

The new case was begun in 2017 after DNA evidence was brought from America by a detective.

Singer Julio Iglesias smiles during his star unveiling ceremony at the Walk of Fame in San Juan, Puerto Rico. File picture: Carlos Giusti/AP

He obtained it from one of the singer’s sons, Julio Iglesias Junior, when he picked up a bottle of water after surfing in Miami.

Lawyers said a DNA test showed that Mr Iglesias Jr and Mr Santos were brothers.

Mrs Edite told the court in Valencia that she had a one-week affair with Iglesias in Catalonia in July 1975 and that Javier was born nine months later.

The singer’s defence team argued that the trial should not take place since the case had already gone to court.

But the legal team acting for Mr Santos and his mother argued the ‘DNA evidence’ justified the new case. Iglesias has 20 working days to appeal. Mr Santos’s lawyer Fernando Osuna later quipped on Twitter that Iglesias, who has sold 300 million records and has a net worth of £240 million, had ‘become a father at the age of 75.

‘Javier won the trial. Julio Iglesias lost. Science wins, lack of reason lost,’ he added. Iglesias has been married twice, to Isabel Preysler with whom he had three children, and to Miranda Rijnsburger, his current wife with whom he has five.

‘Don’t ask me how many brothers I have,’ Julio Jr said in 2018 on television.